Nokia 7: Here is how the latest smartphone by HMD Global fares against the competition

HMD Global, the company that holds the exclusive rights to make Nokia-branded smartphones has launched its latest smartphone — the Nokia 7 — in the Chinese market.

Nokia 7 joins the line up of HMD Global’s Android-powered Nokia handsets but it is the first one to come with a glass back. The company has priced the device starting from CNY 2,499 (approx Rs 25,000) for the 4 GB RAM variant up to CNY 2,699 (approx Rs 27,000) for the 6 GB RAM variant.

The Nokia 7 will be available for purchase starting 24 October in China. The company has not announced the pricing and availability details for other countries at the time of writing. The device comes with a 7000-series aluminum frame with a diamond-cut bevelled edges and the glass back is a vacuum moulded 3D Corning Gorilla Glass. The phone comes with IP 54 certification making it splash-proof and it will be available in Gloss Black and Matte White colours.

In terms of internal hardware, the Nokia 7 sports an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 processor clocked at 2.2 GHz along with Adreno 508 GPU and 4 GB or 6 GB RAM. It is equipped with 64 GB of internal storage which is expandable using a microSD card. The smartphone comes with a 5.2-inch FHD IPS LCD display with a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. It runs Android 7.1.1 Nougat out of the box and HMD Global has promised an Android Oreo update soon.

With the launch of Nokia 7, we thought that it is good time to pit the device against its competition. So, we selected Nokia 7, Moto G5S Plus , Xiaomi Mi A1 , and Huawei Honor 9i . The reason we selected these smartphones is that most of these devices run Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 series (or the custom-made equivalents) and are in the same price bracket.

All these smartphones are considered mid-range devices from competing smartphone makers. Bear in mind that we’re still not done testing some of these smartphones, so we’re currently comparing them going only by their specifications on paper. A real-world test should follow soon.